They are nothing if not passionate in Kiev. While debating the seemingly innocuous subject of lease renewal for a Russian naval base this week, all hell broke loose. Check out the photos of the chaos. The chamber’s speaker had to be shielded by umbrellas as he was pelted with eggs, while smoke bombs exploded and politicians brawled, reports the BBC.
New York Magazine has a great slideshow of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things
Ride along with Seattle’s new mayor Mike McGinn as he bikes to work –6 miles each way to City Hall.
It’s a interesting time in the Golden State. There are more medical-marijuana dispensaries in L.A. than Starbucks.
Veteran correspondent for The Washington Post, T.R. Reid has written an interesting new book on healthcare, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. In the book Reid goes, suffering with his frozen shoulder, to 10 different countries to seek treatment. The journey seems to be a great comparison of the world’s healthcare systems and perspectives. Read the New York Times review or, even better, listen to his interview on Fresh Air. Reid was also on KQED’s Forum as well.
Check how federal stimulus money is being spent in California in this great interactive map.
Recent photos of the former President of the Council of State of Cuba, Fidel Casto, show how the 83 year-old has somehow morphed into your Uncle Morty who spends most of his day sitting at a booth at Denny’s in his tracksuit complaining to the waitress about how salty the eggs are.
Check out this collection of Barack Obama during his freshman year at Occidental College. The photos were taken in 1980 by then photography student Lisa Jack and they are now on exhibit at the M+B Gallery in Los Angeles. Read more about Jack’s photos.
Wah? Obama is seeking to expand the government’s wiretapping powers.
If you’re looking for more clues as to how Depression 2.0 started, a good place to start is when the Republican-lead 106th Congress voted on November 5, 1999 to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone.
In the House, 155 Democrats and 207 Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.
…”I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota.
The Atlantic has a nice graphic displaying the changes in American society and government since 2000. Read the sources for the map.
Take a look at the President’s Crackberry. It seems to be a $3,300 Sectera Edge that is NSA-approved and has the ability to communicate classified emails and phone calls.
My favorite presidential portrait is here.
At precisely noon yesterday a change happened in this country. The whitehouse.gov website has changed with the new President and it brings a few touches of clean design and function from Obama’s campaign site. Another thing under the hood has changed too, the robots.txt file for the whitehouse.gov website is different now too. The last robot.txt file under the Bush White House prevented search engines from indexing more than 2400 files and directories on the site. The new administration’s site prevents the indexing of only one directory. This is an encouraging, if small, sign of a more transparent government from the Obama administration.
Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth has been made public. It’s my favorite Leibovitz photo.
Let the wife of the Vice President, Lynne Cheney, take you on a tour of the art on the walls of the Vice President’s residence. The living room is dominated by a wonderful painting by Helen Frankenthaler– and it’s called Lush Spring… and the colors are just so wonderful… the greens just pop out, notes Mrs. Cheney. Moving to the library she describes a carved ship made by French prisoners during the Napoleonic period and it’s carved from animal bone. I think that prisoner condition in that era were pretty awful and people did this incredibly intricate work in order to earn just a little bit of money and they would then sell the ship so they could maybe buy a little extra food.
US photographer Spencer Platt’s photo of young Lebanese driving through a devastated neighborhood of South Beirut has won the World Press Photo of the Year 2006. See more of Platt’s photos of Beirut from last Summer. Also read the story behind the photo.
Here you go, an atlas of world faiths showing who believes what, where.
After Stephen Colbert’s amazing performance at last year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, the association is taking no chances this year and has hired 69-year old comedian Rich Little as host.
More US soldiers have died in Iraq than died in the first three years of the Vietnam War. Startling, but true it seems. There were 392 fatal casualties in 1962, ‘63 and ‘64 in Vietnam. The current US deathtoll in Iraq is up to 418 today– which includes the 2 Black Hawks shot down this weekend.